Stories for July 2018

Australia and other anti-whaling nations are seeking a showdown with Japan as Tokyo attempts to resume commercial whaling later this year. Japanese officials have reportedly confirmed the country's attempt to alter voting rules and allow hunting of whale species with healthy numbers at an International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting in Brazil in September.

European Union on Monday slammed the Trump administration for considering tariffs on auto imports, saying they could lead to global retaliation against some US$ 300 billion in U.S. goods amid signs of a brewing trade war.

The leader of Britain's biggest trade union says he will fight for another EU referendum if his members want one. Unite's Len McCluskey, a close ally of Jeremy Corbyn, said policy would be decided by a vote at the union's conference on Tuesday.

Shrimp (Pleoticus muelleri) landings in Argentina accumulated during the first half of this year are somewhat lower than those for the same period last year. According to the preliminary figures, up to 21 June, released by the Argentine Under-Secretariat of Fisheries, 68,081 tons had been unloaded, compared to about 87,400 tons landed between January and June 2017, which was a record year.

Firms are running out of patience over the lack of progress in the Brexit talks, a major business organization has warned Theresa May. The British Chambers of Commerce has published a list of 23 “real-world” questions that it says urgently need answers as the UK's EU exit approaches.

Argentina's central bank said on Monday that it hiked bank reserve requirements by 3 percentage points, following a hike of three percentage points on June 18 as monetary policymakers seek to calm inflation and end a run on the peso currency. The Peso gained 1.9% on Monday against the dollar.

Argentina will allow fuel retailers to freely set pump prices starting in August, according to an Energy Ministry official familiar with the plan, a move that could encourage badly needed investment in the nation's oil patch but risks worsening sky-high inflation and angering consumers.

Mexico's stock market sank on Monday and the peso slid after presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador handily won election while his allies picked up a significant number of congressional seats. Mexico's benchmark stock index shed more than 2%, its steepest one-day drop in nearly five months, after Lopez Obrador on Sunday won with the widest margin in a presidential election since the 1980s

The British Prime Minister, Theresa May, will visit Berlin and the Netherlands in the coming days to meet with the German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Dutch authorities before assembling her government to finally decide what commercial relationship her country wants with the European Union (EU) in the future, commented her spokesman on Monday.

The resolution to Germany's government crisis proved elusive on Sunday after the head of the Bavaria-only Christian Social Union in Angela Merkel's conservative bloc offered his resignation rather than back down from his stance against the chancellor's migration policies.